Winnipeg author David A. Robertson shares intimate experiences with anxiety in new memoir

July 30, 2024 Canuck

For the majority of his public life, bestselling author David A. Robertson has fought his mental health struggles in private. In his latest book All The Little Monsters, however, he opens up about his experiences with anxiety as a way to accept and heal.

“It was a story I needed to tell because if I have learned anything, it’s that talking about my own mental health issues has helped others who’ve seen themselves reflected in what I continue to live through,” he told CBC Books in an email.

“I wanted people to know that it’s okay not to be okay and maybe provide some help through the experiences I have had.”

A book cover with colourful block letters.

The author of more that 25 books of different genres, the Winnipeg-based, Swampy Cree writer is known for the Misewa Saga series, picture books On the Trapline and When We Were Alone, graphic novel Breakdown, and his memoir Black Water, among others.

In All The Little Monsters, he wanted to discuss his own mental health to show readers “a journey full of successes and perceived failures, normalization of mental health conditions, strategies that may help in their own lives or the lives of people they know and love, and a pathway to healing, or at the very least, to start a healing journey.”

“It’s a conversation more than it is literature, an invitation to listen and to share, a book where readers will hopefully feel that I’m sitting with you, that I’m talking to you. It’s personal, a story of my life with depression and anxiety, but at the same time, reflects a common experience and encourages others to share, to heal, and to never give up.”

All The Little Monsters will be released on Jan. 21, 2025. You can read an excerpt below.

Prologue
The Monster Speaks

It had been a tough week. I was at a writers’ festival in Calgary, about to go onstage for a panel about mental health, which I’d been writing about more often over the last few years. There was no particular reason why the week had been hard. Sometimes, there’s a clear explanation, and I can trace my destructive thoughts or awful body sensations to an event or a stressor; I suspect this is true for many people. I may be overtired, overworked, emotionally exhausted, and so on. Stuck in the moment, I can’t see the forest for the trees. I can’t sift through the fog. Other times, there doesn’t seem to be a reason; my mind and, in turn, my body decide they’re going to wreak havoc on my life. My anxiety seems to come out of nowhere. For me, at least, it happens when I’ve let my guard down. I may have had an uncharacteristically great week where I felt close to normal; I may have caught myself thinking, Hey, maybe it’s gone, maybe I’m just . . . okay, and then I’m hammered with it in the worst way, as if it wants to remind me that it’s here forever.

That I’ll never be free from it.

My anxiety seems to come out of nowhere. For me, at least, it happens when I’ve let my guard down.– David A. Robertson

I’d forced myself through several busy days at Wordfest, which was full of school visits and other events. When I could, I retreated to my room to rest, but I would think, worry, and analyze every little thing going on in my body, and there was no rest in that. And now, only minutes remained before I had to meet the other panellists in the hospitality suite on the hotel’s first floor. I was pacing back and forth in my room, doing what I’d been doing whenever I found myself alone that week, when I opened the balcony door and stepped outside into the fresh air.

It was autumn, and a crisp and cool breeze was sauntering by. I caught it against my face and closed my eyes for a moment to try to enjoy the sensation, to try to live outside of my anxiety, if only for a second. I heard scuttling, as if a mouse were walking by my feet, and I opened my eyes to find the origin of the sound. A dried autumn leaf had found its way onto my balcony, and with the help of the quiet wind, it was tiptoeing across the concrete, where it would inevitably get caught up in the air and continue its journey, no care in the world.

I looked down as though I could see where the leaf had come from, which tree had let it go, but I ended up staring at the ground. And a thought came and went, quick as a lightning bolt, and in its celerity, hard to articulate.

My hotel room was several floors from the ground level. I pictured the sidewalk. I imagined walking with my fellow panellists down the street towards the library where the event would take place. I had to take the elevator to get down there, and it flashed across my mind how much quicker it would be if I stepped over the edge and fell like an autumn leaf. It was not the first time a thought like this had announced itself, and falling was not the only method of my suicidal ideation (in fact, falling was a rare thought because I’m afraid of heights), but whatever modus I’m considering, it’s always quick. I suppose, luckily, or sometimes unluckily, my fear of death trumps my fear of life. At any rate, like every other time, the image of my death and of silencing my anxiety, panic, and depression came, and it went. On this occasion, it was ushered away by a telephone ring; the party was about to leave for the library, and I had to hurry downstairs.

I suppose, luckily, or sometimes unluckily, my fear of death trumps my fear of life.– David A. Robertson

I took the elevator.

When I entered the hospitality suite to gather with my fellow panellists and members of the Wordfest team who were walking over to the event with us, I, like I’d done so many times that week, pushed my anxiety to the side so that I could put on a face, so that I could function in a social environment. I greeted everybody as the fun, relaxed guy I’d learned to put forward, and we left the hotel en route to the library, an easy five-minute walk away.

It was a nice walk. I hadn’t seen Alicia Elliott, a Haudenosaunee writer, in a while, nor Shelagh Rogers, a long-time broadcaster and Métis with roots in my home community, Norway House Cree Nation. We caught up with each other during the brief hike. The company, the chilly air, the traffic, and the thought of the event all distracted me from the unpleasant sensations I had been hiding in my body. I felt better than I had all week. Then, as we passed a restaurant I
frequented while in Calgary, a panic attack hit me with the force of a truck. I was blindsided.

The relative quietness in my body gave way to an all too familiar chaos.

What was the trigger? What set me off?

I couldn’t think of an answer. I couldn’t think of anything that had kicked my mind and body into overdrive. And yet, there I was. There it was. My anxiety, that little monster, coming in to give me a terrible embrace. I talk about my anxiety as though it’s a living being; it’s hard not to think like that when it’s with you so often and for so long.

I talk about my anxiety as though it’s a living being; it’s hard not to think like that when it’s with you so often and for so long.– David A. Robertson

Anxiety manifests itself in different and disparate ways, from person to person. It can be a pervasive sense of dread, and you may know the source of the terror or not; it may be just a feeling that something awful will happen, and you feel a certainty about that. You may feel butterflies, the kind an athlete gets before a big game, or a public speaker before stepping out in front of a large crowd; only there’s no game and no crowd. Your mind might race so quickly that your thoughts smash together like cars in a freeway pileup, blocking everything else so that all you have are those thoughts, and you don’t know how to make sense of them or how the mess will be cleared. For many people like me, there is a physical reaction with varying degrees of severity. Headaches. Sweating. Stomach problems. Shortness of breath. Shakiness. Weak knees. Rubber legs. Dizziness. Hives. Numbness in your extremities. Chest pain. That’s why, at my worst, I called an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack. Twice. And it’s why I’ve developed acute hypochondria (I’m not sure if that’s a thing; I just, perhaps appropriately, made up my condition and diagnosed myself); it can make you feel anything and everything and often several symptoms at once.

Anxiety can be an onslaught.

I felt a few of those things while walking with the crew past the restaurant, but most notably, as the case had been for me for the last while, my heart began to “skip.” I had a flare-up of PVCs, or premature ventricular contractions. I put skip in quotation marks because when you experience PVCs, your heart is not skipping; it’s beating twice in short order, which disrupts the heart rhythm, and a pause follows those quick beats. People describe the uncomfortable sensation as a flutter. Everybody has them at some point, but lucky people never feel them. During a panic attack, my heart welcomes an extra beat, every beat, so that all I feel are flutters and skips, and I feel Every. Single. One. And so, while lumbering to the library, I began to deep breathe, one of the techniques I use to dull anxiety and panic, while simultaneously trying to
keep up a conversation (and not let on I was having a panic attack) and ignore my heart, which was going haywire.

You’re not going to die. You’re not going to die. You’re not going to die.

I made it to the library’s front steps, the first of several flights that would eventually bring us to the second floor, where the event would take place. I always make it, no matter how awful I feel, no matter how positive I am that this time will be the one, that I’ll collapse to the ground, shrivel up, and be carried away like the leaf that had found its way onto my hotel room balcony.

But even though I always make it, sometimes I’d rather not. I’d be okay with not. But this evening, I had a job to do, and I did what is typical of me: I added a new line to my internal chant.

You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. F–k you, anxiety.

If you or someone you know is struggling, here’s where to get help:

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